of centuries are idle tales:  my explanations are not so to be forestalled.  We forget the shallow answers to shallow questions, when now we have deeper genuine questions to ask.  The great are happy babes of Beauty and Good.  Truth returns in a fresh suspicion, and all are welcome who wear on the brows that soft commingled light and shadow of an advancing, sweet, inexplicable Fate.  Our hope is no house, but a wing; no roof can be endured but the blue one.  What method have we yet to serve the spontaneous or spiritual being? what culture, art, society, worship, in which his need and power are so much as recognized?  There is indefinable certainty of Nature beyond Nature, man beyond man.  Genius opens all doors, the earth-doors, the sky-doors,—­throws down the horizon and the heaven, to come into open air.  All paths lead out to the sea, where a day’s voyage may teach that the receding circle bounds our sight alone, and not the deep.  We look out not on chaos and darkness, but on order too large for the brain, and light, for which as owls we have yet no capacious eye.  We leave every perception neglected to wait on the future; but every future has its future devouring the past.  What is left but bending of the knee and boundless confidence?

* * * * *

My brother and I.

  From the door where I stand I can see his fair land
    Sloping up to a broad sunny height,
  The meadows new-shorn, and the green wavy corn,
    The buckwheat all blossoming white: 
  There a gay garden blooms, there are cedars like plumes,
  And a rill from the mountain leaps up in a fountain,
    And shakes its glad locks in the light.

  He dwells in the hall where the long shadows fall
    On the checkered and cool esplanade;
  I live in a cottage secluded and small,
    By a gnarly old apple-tree’s shade: 
  Side by side in the glen, I and my brother Ben,—­
  Just the river between us, with borders as green as
    The banks where in childhood we played.

  But now nevermore upon river or shore
     He runs or he rows by my side;
  For I am still poor, like our father before,
    And he, full of riches and pride,
  Leads a life of such show, there is no room, you know,
  In the very fine carriage he gained by his marriage
    For an old-fashioned brother to ride.

  His wife, with her gold, gives him friends, I am told,
    With whom she is rather too gay,—­
  The senator’s son, who is ready to run
    For her gloves and her fan, night or day,
  And to gallop beside, when she wishes to ride: 
  Oh, no doubt ’tis an honor to see smile upon her
    Such world-famous fellows as they!

  Ah, brother of mine, while you sport, while you dine,
    While you drink of your wine like a lord,
  You might curse, one would say, and grow jaundiced and gray,
    With such guests every day at your board! 
  But you sleek down your rage like a pard in its cage,
  And blink in meek fashion through the bars of your passion,
    As husbands like you can afford.